by Lesley Hebert

Created on: May 03, 2010

The present perfect progressive, which is also called the present perfect continuous, is taught to intermediate or upper intermediate learners of English as a second language after they are familiar with the present continuous, the past continuous, and the present perfect.

Presentation

Tell the learners that you made arrangements to meet a friend for dinner at a restaurant last night..  You went to the restaurant and waited, but your friend did not arrive at the arranged time.  You waited and waited, and they finally showed up thirty minutes late.

Ask: “What do you say to your friend?”

Elicit their suggestions until you hear something like “I have waited for half an hour” or “I waiting for half an hour”.  Recast it as “I have been waiting for half an hour” and write the correct sentence form on the board.

Form

Now you can demonstrate with your example that the affirmative form of the tense is formed as follows

present of have + been + -ing form of verb

Provide other examples if necessary.  For instance:

He has been studying English for 5 years

We have been talking for a long time.

Yes/no questions are formed by reversing the subject and have:

Have I been waiting for an hour?

For Wh-questions, use the same word order as for yes/no questions and simply put the wh-question word at the front.

How long have I been waiting?

Negative statements are formed by inserting “not” after “have”

I have not been waiting very long

Function

The present perfect continuous is used to describe an action that began in the past and continues to the present.  As in the presentation example above, it is frequently used to emphasizes length of time.

When a time expression is used, “for” is used with a length of time:

I have been living here for two years.

I have been waiting for the bus for over an hour.

I have been trying to fix my computer for days.

“since” is used when the action began at a specific point in time.

I have been living here since 2007.

I have been waiting for the bus since three o’clock.

I  have been trying to fix my computer since Sunday.

Note that, as with other continuous forms, the present perfect progressive is not used with non action verbs such as:

the verb “to be”

verbs of cognition (e.g. know, understand, think)

verbs of ownership (e.g. have, own, possess)

verbs of sense or feeling (e.g. love, hate, feel).

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